"Legend tells of a stockrider who could break the wildest brumby horse, fight the forces of evil with fists or hunting knife or deadly carbine...a man who lived with one aim in his carefree heart...to right the wrongs of the big, lusty growing continent that was his home...,and still is!....for Clancy of the Overflow, the stockrider of song and story still lives!"
Published by Australia's Apache Comics from Cleveland Press, Clancy of the Overflow used the title character of the 1889 poem of the same name by noted bush poet A. B. "Banjo" Paterson (1864-1941) and reimagined the free-spirited drove as a legendary hero. Paterson, one of the greatest writers of Australia's colonial period, is best known for his poem "Waltzing Matilda" (1907 -- and which has been recorded more than other Australian song); as well as "The Man from Snowy River," "Saltbush Bill," and "We're All Australians Now," among many others
Eight issues of Clancy of the Overflow were published, all drawn in fine style by Hal English.
Riding southward, Clancy comes across a young boy being attacked by a wild tribe of aborigines (or "native blacks" -- 1950s Australia was not noted for being politically correct). Scaring the attackers off with his rifle, Clancy swoops down and places the boy on his horse, and escapes. The boy is Tim Barker from Raintree Station. Tim, an orphan who has been placed at the station, ran away because the manger beat him. Troopers are on the lookout for murderous cattleduffers (cattle thieves, for all of you non-Aussies); Tim fears they are searching for him. The troopers spy Clancy from a distance; thinking h is a cattleduffer they give chase, but Clancy (because he is Clancy) easily avoids them and stumbles up a secret valley. But the valley is where the cattleduffers have their base of operations. When one of the baddies tries to capture Tim, Clancy and his fists put paid to that idea. The captured man (his name is Moleskin) tells Clancy that the boss of then outfit is a moonlighter* named Blackie Norseman, who broke out of Cockatoo gaol a year before. As Clancy and Tim go to find the troopers, he meets a local farmer, Jim Colly, and his daughter Velvet. Clancy leaves Tim with them as he rides off for help. While this is happening, Moleskin manages to escape and meet up with Blackie Norseman, who has a plan. Clancy soon finds himself falsely accused by Russ Madson, the manager of the Raintree and Tim's nemesis. The troopers arrest Clancy. Can Clancy get out of this mess? Will Tim be safe? Will Blackie Norseman, Moleskin, and Russ Madson get their comeuppance?
What do you think?
*"Moonlighter" is an idiom that has many meanings. Evidently the most common one in Australia today is a braggard. One older meaning(taken from the Irish) is a thief or a burglar who operates at night, often a cattle thief.
(It's interesting that, in 2014, the staff of the Banjo Paterson...more than a Poet Museum in Yeoval, Central New South Wales, were not aware of this comic cook, but were happy and amazed at the liberties taken with Paterson's character.)
For the curious, here's Paterson's original poem:
Clancy of the Overflow
I had written him a letter for which I had, for want of a better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of the Overflow".
And an answer came directed in a writing unsuspected,
(And I think the same was written in a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."
In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.
And the bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him,
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the won'drous glory of the everlasting stars.
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ry of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.
And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.
And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.
And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced then round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy of the Overflow.
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